Conventional television reception requires an outdoor rooftop or an indoor set-top antenna. This tethered arrangement is unsightly and limits the flexibility of the viewer to move the set about. Some residential communities do not permit installation of rooftop antennas, thereby requiring the use of indoor antennas. For analog television (ATV) received with typical indoor antennas such as loops, monopoles and “rabbit-ears” the picture quality is often very poor, especially if the position of the indoor antenna is not adjusted for the particular channel being watched. For digital television (DTV), which is expected to be the future of wireless television worldwide, reception in urban and suburban locations with typical indoor antennas is either impossible or problematic.
Attempts at designing small and concealed antennas for television reception without loss of performance relative to outdoor antennas have been relatively unsuccessful. U.S. Pat. No. 3,906,506 issued to J. K Verma et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,342,999 issued to O. M. Woodward et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 4,380,011 issued to R. Torres et al. describe concealed narrow-band loop antennas requiring either switching or tuning to a specific band of frequencies. In the case of the Woodward and Torres patents, an antenna pattern steering control was coupled to the loop antennas.